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Anime Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – Second Season
In 2006, the anime adaptation of Nagaru Tanigawa’s Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series took the anime scene by storm. By mixing a wide variety of different genres into an original story, the series offered an exciting experience unlike any other at the time. Being only 14 episodes long, it’s needless to say that fans wanted more. In late 2007, a second season was finally announced. And then… we didn’t hear anything about it for a while. It wasn’t until 2009 that we finally started to hear news pop up again about the much anticipated second season of Haruhi.
But fans got their hopes up too soon. Instead of airing the alleged second season, Kyoto Animation (“KyoAni”) later confirmed that they would simply re-air the first season of Haruhi. Fans had been teased, and they weren’t happy. But KyoAni had a surprise up their sleeves. That surprise was called “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody” and it was a brand new episode that was aired during the re-airing of Haruhi‘s first season. This was the first of what makes up the so-called “second season” of Haruhi (commonly referred to as Haruhi S2 or Haruhi 2009), all of which aired during the re-airing of the first season. A pleasant surprise, indeed. But was all the anticipation and putting up with KyoAni’s teasing worth it? Well, that depends…
In writing this review, I’m going to assume you’re already familiar with the Haruhi series. If you aren’t, then be warned: this review may contain spoilers from the first season.
Haruhi 2009 takes place during the events of the first season, and is divided into three arcs: Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight, and The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya. The arcs are shown out of chronological order, though the episodes within each arc are in order. Two of the three arcs, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody and The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, focus on giving some backstory and explaining some of the mysteries that were left open. Endless Eight, however, takes a completely different direction, and is by far the most controversial part of the Haruhi anime series.
Otaku in Review Podcast – You Got Brad Rice'd!
This week we got Brad Rice, Editor-in-Chief of Japanator.com to come on the show to discuss his article which he wrote in response to Eric Sherman’s article “Anime – R.I.P.” (yes, we’re still talking about that). Also on this episode, I talk a bit about the Starcraft II Beta and some of the shows I watched recently, including Planetes and Taisho Baseball Girls.
Otaku in Review Podcast – R.I.P. Bang Zoom
The hottest topic of the week was Eric Sherman’s (President of Bang Zoom Entertainment, an anime dubbing studio) controversial post about what’s killing the anime industry and what fans need to do to stop it. Scott and I discuss the post and the problems we have with it. Also on this episode: FUNimation hits 8 million streaming views.
Revisiting the Sub vs. Dub Debate
Buy Toradora! You don't wanna make Taiga angry.
When I last touched this topic, I was still very angry and bitter at companies like Sentai Filmworks and Bandai for not dubbing anime titles that I personally felt deserved a dub (specifically Clannad, Hayate the Combat Butler, Kannagi, and some others). To me, it looked like these companies just “didn’t care anymore” and “weren’t listening to their fans.”
Truth be told, I’ve never really been a big fan of dubs. There are many dubs that I absolutely abhor. However, there are many out there who love dubs, and hate the fact that companies are steering away from them. The problem with this is that many of these people will openly state their refusal to buy a series simply because there’s no dub. Which brings me to…
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Nyanman
